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UNDERGROUND VOICES: POETRY
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ANNE VALLEY-FOX Election day, 2008 The undecided have finally made up their minds or gone into hiding the rest of us are babbling brooks a friend reports she’s too keyed up to sleep at night an armchair economist suffers visions of sea-view mansions sliding onto the highway a guy on the street loves the idea of young kids in the White House even so he’s decided to vote for the older man with experience someone at the mall holds up a sign: “$ for health & education not foreign wars!” Candidate A declares his opponent intends to spread the wealth “Boo!” the crowd hisses Candidate B will “take out” the leader of Pakistan if necessary Progressives react with scalded tongues an elder warns that whenever we hang our hope on someone else’s shoulders he or she will surely break our hearts Howard Zinn’s radio voice whirs like electric beaters mixing a cake as a young navigator he dropped bombs on civilians in World War II he didn’t think about what he was doing then but now he does we live in a hair-trigger nuclear world not to mention the mega-business of conventional weapons a speaker repeats what someone in Latin America once wrote on a wall “Let’s save pessimism for better times” a Congolese mother cradles a dying baby mute with hunger her older children straggle back to the village along the road armed rebels wait for the treaty to snap the mother tells the tv reporter she’d rather be shot by rebels than watch her children starve to death here there’s a media flap over the price of a candidate’s wardrobe and is it a plus for a woman to shoot a moose? canvassers knock on the door “War is no longer an option for solving conflicts” Professor Z concludes and R. D. Laing in the ‘60s: “Going crazy may be a sane response to an insane situation” plain as the noses on our faces eat of this cake and quadruple in size like Alice think outside of the keyhole both candidates reference prices at the pump both invoke worried breadwinners around their kitchen tables last summer we only wanted our soldiers home from Iraq candidate B is saying yes but also we must double our troops in Afghanistan a shopkeeper offers some common sense: but haven’t we seen on 60 Minutes (or maybe it’s Bill Moyers) Afghanistan craggier than the moon and Pashtun warlords staking human heads along the Pakistani border? an early voter pulled the lever before she realized that voting a straight ticket excluded the President she exits the booth weeping voting rights activists explain the practical complications working class people cannot afford to stand in line for hours they have to get back to work or pick up their children at daycare for weeks we’re barraged with pre-recorded telephone messages please be sure to go to the polls next Tuesday how could we forget? unless something looms larger a child’s fever rocketing off the charts a composer’s engulfment by runaway notes the pollsters insist they are not seers they only report the numbers but you can see their mouths twitching matrons for the Grand Old Party are waving flags at a rally smiling hard like sunlight on fields of ice what does it mean to wave the flag? what did it ever mean? if everything has already happened history might wise us up but truth in politics doesn’t equate with a hard look in the mirror “Election Day” unfurls like a banner across the morning dark maybe today the American people (whoever we prove to be) will shove the juggernaut over a cliff maybe today a Congolese mother stealing back to the village will dig up something to feed her starving children |
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© 2004-2011 Underground Voices |
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